FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT PUBLIC HEALTH - PAGE 4

-- Mayor Robert Randich is considering making the health director's post a full-time job. The town now employs a part-time health director, Dr. Shahnaz Hussain, and a full-time public health coordinator, Robert Cosgrove. Cosgrove soon will receive a master's degree in public health, which would qualify him for the director's job. By boosting the health director's hours, the town would be eligible for a reimbursement from the state, Randich said. Newington would receive 52 cents for each resident, or about $15,000, to help fund the full-time health director's position.

David Ropeik is an instructor in risk communication at the Harvard School of Public Health and is no longer director of risk communication at Harvard University's Center for Risk Analysis. A story on Page 1 Monday incorrectly reported his position. .

Workers at the state Department of Public Health said Thursday that they need a thaw in the state's hiring freeze to keep fighting the state's stubborn public health problems, such as AIDS and infant mortality. They said the hiring freeze is particularly hurting efforts to recruit nurses and laboratory workers, who are in short supply. The lunch hour rally held outside the agency's Capitol Avenue offices in Hartford was organized by the New England Health Care Employees Union District 1199, which represents 375 workers at the state agency.

The director of Arise and Shine Day Care Center is contesting a state official's recommendation to revoke the center's license. The state Department of Public Health this week will set a date for Director Karen J. Peirce to argue her case to a hearing officer. The session probably will be scheduled for late this month or August, a department spokeswoman said Friday. A two-month-long hearing this year ended with a report concluding that Arise and Shine was a dirty and poorly maintained operation with unmotivated, unsupervised staff.

Public health consultant Robert W. Powitz has been named the town's health director. A resident of Old Saybrook, Powitz begins his new job immediately, town officials said. A registered sanitarian, Powitz' duties will include inspecting the town's restaurants and septic systems and enforcing state and local health codes. He will also advise the board of selectmen on environmental health and sanitation issues and will coordinate community health efforts. "I'll be the first one on the scene if there is an outbreak of illness," said Powitz.

State health officials have found that a Barkhamsted landfill -- a federal Superfund site since 1989 -- poses no apparent public health hazard. Residential wells in the area contained no hazardous levels of contaminants, the state Department of Public Health announced last week. The landfill served Barkhamsted, New Hartford, Winsted and Colebrook. From 1974 to 1988, the dump received municipal and industrial waste, including solvents, oily sludge and other liquid chemical waste.

Dr. Frederick G. Adams, a former state health commissioner and respected public health advocate, died Sunday at his Hartford home of complications from Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 64. Dr. Adams, a prominent dentist, was recently honored by St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford for his contributions to health care. "Dr. Frederick Adams was a great humanitarian who leaves a rich legacy of achievements and contributions on behalf of our community," said David D'Eramo, president and chief executive officer of St. Francis/Mount Sinai Health Care System.

The Department of Children and Families' practice of overseeing and licensing its own facilities would end if legislation proposed this week in the Senate gets approved. "When problems arise at a DCF facility -- and there have been plenty of problems in the past -- one can reasonably ask whether the entity that is responsible for running the facility is also the best choice for oversight of the problems there," Sen. Edward Meyer, D-Guilford, said in proposing the bill Wednesday.

MaryAnn Cherniak Lexius is ready to distinguish herself as the town's first full-time public health director. "I've been in public health for 20 years, and this is a great opportunity for me," she said Tuesday, midway through her first day on the job. Once a town reaches a population of 40,000, the state mandates the hiring of a full-time public health professional, Lexius said. Wallingford reached that point about five years ago and had been operating with a half-time position.

Dr. Franklin Manley Foote, a self-described "old-fashioned country doctor" whose public health career included 15 years as the state's commissioner of health, died Sunday at Fairview Manor in Great Barrington, Mass. He was 89. The former resident of Wethersfield was first appointed commissioner of the state Department of Health by then-Gov. Abraham Ribicoff in 1959. He continued to serve in the position under governors John Dempsey and Thomas J. Meskill. Dr. Foote was a man of seeming unlimited energy who delighted in running between appointments and bounding up flights of stairs rather than taking elevators.